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naranjapetrificada · 10 months

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Just a small thing I noticed while being totally normal about the gay pirates:

I've watched The Kiss™ way too many times a normal number of times and my favorite moment is the series of microexpressions Rhys cycles through while Stede is reacting to "what makes Ed happy is...you" because it's just so lovely and masterfully done. While trying to find a good gif of just that moment (no luck so far!) I noticed something that happens while Ed is pulling Stede in.

Stede, darling honey light of my life, clueless useless "oblivious" gay that he is, tilts his head a bit and leans into the kiss too. Before it's even started. On some level he registers that This Is Happening in time to react in a positive way, even before their lips have touched.

Our boy is a creature of instinct, and when he acts on his emotional instincts without thinking too much he knocks so much shit out of the park. Instinct is part of why "you wear fine things well" hits as hard as it does. Instinct is how he can woo Ed as easily as he does. Instinct is how they were able connect so deeply so quickly, because his instinct is to be open and non-judgemental to this beautiful man waiting beside his sickbed and asking about fine fabrics.

Stede's thoughts are still too clouded by his trauma and self-loathing to be useful for him, and he can end up thinking too much about what he "should" do or what other people do. Thinking is part of the reason he's so quick to believe Chauncey in the woods. Thinking means succumbing to beliefs about his perceived worthlessness, which leads to his biggest mistakes. Thinking tells him to adjust what he says about Blackbeard in that tavern of townies, when his instinct was to say how "absolutely lovely" Ed is.

Obviously man cannot live by instinct alone, like he definitely should have thought for a minute about making a deal with Geraldo to fence the hostage. Stede needs to learn to balance the two and when to listen to either/both of them. But I was just so excited to see him leaning in the way he does because it underlines a feeling I've had for a minute, which is that Stede's instincts are those of someone crushing and then falling in love, and that never wavers.

He lacks the context and vocabulary to identify what's going on without outside intervention, but he also deeply gets it in a way that's extremely queer and that I hope starts showing up more in the fanon. I do a little happy dance every time I see this in people's fics and I just need so many more of them! Give me more eager Stede who is Ready To Go once he's given the right context for his feelings about Ed!

#ofmd #our flag means death #ofmd meta #our flag means death meta #meta #no but for real Eager Stede Bonnet is a fucking delight to encounter #no thoughts detected in that well-coiffed little head of his #and when it comes to emotions at least things work out better for him #gentlebeard #blackbonnet #stede bonnet #I think I've also written meta before about how Stede Bonnet Sex God™ isn't a joke and it's his instincts!#it's why so many fics have him lacking in previous experience but not in creativity or enthusiasm #his relationship to instinct also feels autistic to me for relatable reasons but that's a whole other thing #ofmd spoilers #The Kiss™

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rocksalt-and-pie · 2 years

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shout-out to the makers of NBC Hannibal for (clearly) reading all four books about Hannibal Lecter by Thomas Harris and going "hmm. actually we will make the gayest possible version of this" going on to COMPLETELY disregard the other main character and (canon) ?love interest? of the series and never even MENTION Clarice Starling. Like it's so funny to me that she never even appears on the show when book!Will Graham literally fucks off after The Red Dragon and wants nothing to do with any of this anymore and book!Hannibal is obsessed with Clarice in the same way that tv!Hannibal is obsessed with tv!Will. like they really took a whole book franchise, picked out the cherries, and made it their own personal little gay AU. that's so refreshing and should be a leading example in television adaptations. in this essay i will

#hannibal #hannigram #hannibal lecter #will graham #Clarice Starling #thomas harris #nbc hannibal #mp #i actually like clarice as a character though #but i do think that the red dragon is the best book of the series and they get worse and worse #also they have nothing to do with the show when it comes to aesthetics #they're literally just action filled crime thrillers. they feel very to the point‚ very technical and practical and sober #whereas the show is literally just art and poetry and emotions and meaning and simply beautiful #i also love that the show treats its female characters so much better than the books #the books feel very masculine which is just due to the time of publishing i guess #i feel like a lot of books written and published by men in the 80s/90s have this very brutalist straight forward no emotions style #but yeah. the people who made the show really went all out with it and i love how their interpretation is kinda just high scale fanfiction #like i respect that so much and also: goals

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dayurno · 3 months

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this is somewhat of a vent post & something i said i would not do again but has been plaguing me enough that i think getting it out might feel better. so. has anydoggy else been. Baffled and upset by nora sakavic’s refusal to speak on how terribly aftg has treated its characters of color? with the author of the series coming back with a new book and starting up on her online activity again, and questions of what she’d change about aftg bubbling up, it’s particularly glaring to me that we are all playing this very long game of pretend where we ignore how badly the non-white cast has been treated & her lack of thoughts on it

and i understand not wanting to bring up nicky and thea because people pick on her for it. i’m not trying to discredit nora sakavic’s terrible history of getting harrassed online by aftg fans. but i think it is very cynical, and it is very juvenile, and most of all very cruel, that she gets to ignore the very real ways the books have set up these characters to be hated. i think it’s obvious why the characters who get the most hate are the only canonical characters of color, and i think we do not get to treat this like a deliberate decision on the fandom’s part when the books have put these same characters in degrading and embarrassing and terrible positions in the first place. aftg is not a story about nice characters with clean pasts, but there is a very specific nastiness to the only characters of color being a brown man who sexually harasses and later assaults the main character, a black woman whose only scene is her lashing out at her love interest after being ignored for the first two books, and the japanese villain who gets maybe two lines of complexity before he goes back to being a terrible person. the white cast, in comparison, while not at all free from flaws, are never shown to commit mindless evil; all of their actions are ultimately justified. the book goes out of its way to give them concession after concession. we know exactly who to side with, because aftg tells us who these people are. does nicky’s assault ever get addressed in the books? does riko’s reasoning to be the way that he is ever gets more than briefly aluded to? is thea reserved even a shred of humanity or grace in her one scene?

anyway. it’s been years of talking about this and the fandom has been constantly hostile to criticism in this regard, and more recently any criticism at all, and it’s Grating to be on the other side of this discussion. it’s exhausting to know that in ten years we do not get even an acknowledgment besides the author saying she will not answer questions about nicky and thea anymore. it’s upsetting and it’s ugly and i wish no one had to talk about this again, but we do because what i thought was common sense has been washed away by a sudden influx of no-nuance adoration for the trilogy. basically i hope we all explode

two hours later edit: you're allowed to reblog this! sorry about the confusion

#this has been so upsetting to notice but 🥹whatever #there is a different kind of bitterness to thinking about how ten years have passed #and we are getting new content that changes and maybe even rectifies many of the ways we see and interact w aftg #and none of it not a bit of it addresses the racism #how it’s been ten years and the only thing we really get to show it is a book about a ship between two white men the fandom came up with #after seeing them be Suggested to interact in canon #i understand not wanting to hurt nora sakavics feelings by asking her about this #but imagine how tired we are. Imagine how tired we are #do you know how bad it feels to read through nicky’s worst moments in aftg #and know that he was written this way because he looks like me?#do you understand how exhausting it all is. can you imagine?#the fandom has been so quick to undo the criticism fans of colors have been making since day one #and for what. for what! my doves. for what?#have we come out of it any greater? have we done anything but lie to ourselves?#and anyway this is not some mindless pessimism #this is not me telling you that aftg is bad and you cant love it; cant have it mean anything to you #this is me saying that when we acknowledge these things it makes us better readers and better people #nora sakavic if you are reading this from whatever hellhole america you find yourself in #grabs you by the shoulders. This is not the end #this is not something to sit back and feel bad about #you have opened the floodgates of hell with tsc. kick the door in and release a revised version of aftg #there is a real material way for you to make this better. it is possible and it will not kill you #i would read a revised aftg. my mutuals would. many many many many fans would #making mistakes is not just a human right its a human inevitability #but we do not have to let ourselves get defined by them. We can do hard things #lets go of nora sakavics shoulders. anyway. where were we #aftg #txt #tsc

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mortysmith · 5 months

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In theory i like the idea that rick is growing and developing as a person. In practice it ends up falling short though, because no one balances him out. rick is getting better while no one else is getting worse, and it causes the whole thing to end up feeling a bit stale. The biggest draw, at least for me, has always been rick and morty's shitty dynamic, but it barely exists anymore because rick has been so watered down.

The ideal solution is literally just to make morty into a bigger asshole. Essentially flipping the main characters' personalities would offer a wide variety of conflict into the show, and would also help keep it "fresh".

Instead it feels the writers are pretending that they can't possibly do anything with morty's character, that they have to keep him the same anxious idiot he was in season one. I've said this before, but it's incredibly frustrating to watch the show have no problem with expanding rick's character while struggling with keeping morty's heavily stagnated characterization consistent. Where rick has space to develop between multiple seasons, morty is constantly forced into one of two boxes (smart/stupid) depending on the episode.

#rick and morty #again i dont hate ricks therapy arc i just hate that morty doesnt have a parallel AntiTherapy arc #not to mention how. even if morty IS more bitter it usually only lasts for like an episode #there is no smooth progression or development. the show is just ping ponging between him being an idiot vs him being capable #this is why im sooooooososososo badly hoping the roy machine comes into play again.#otherwise this is genuinely offensive treatment of a main character #genuinely at the moment i feel like fandom understands morty better than the writers.#this is a half vent post to be honest im just so tired of the rick bias within the staff. Like make. a new show at this point #i also have thoughts on the way rick has been written these past few seasons and um .#well it feels lile fans are in the writers room and im afraid this is a negative. it sort of seems like the show is trying to-#sweep ricks past actions and behaviors under the rug #as if he isnt literally the worst person ever. up until recently i guess.#like its just frustrating seeing mortys abuse being handled so haphazardly? like the s5 2 crows episode #it just feels like the writers are trying to fill out a checklist instead of writing them as people.#“what we had was abusive dont you see?” who talks like this #okay im over it(lying)#rick sanchez #morty smith

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whiskey-tango-matcha · 2 months

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for me, nothing hits quite like someone who's sick but like...still in a good mood? like either ignoring it or admitting they're not well but still pleasant to be around. like they sneeze and someone asks if they're ok and they just roll their eyes and say "yeah i just have a stupid fuckin cold" 🫠😳👁️👄👁️🤩

#if you've read anything I've written you already know my love for this #today it's inspired by my husband who started coming down w something yesterday #and he's just like. idk. rocking with it ig lmao #off topic but I'm almost ready to start writing again. i know it's been like over a month #but it's been a T O U G H month and then i started feeling emotionally better and i got sick hahahahah ofc #but things are better now. things are looking up haha #so i promise I'll be back at it soon #& ya I'm going to finish foh boh but if you have requests you can send them. i never know what will spark the writing bug #k I'm out byeee ✌️

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napoleon-usher · 1 year

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KEYFRAME TUTORIAL FOR THOSE WITH A WORKING KNOWLEDGE OF PHOTOSHOP AND GIFMAKING

This is my gif with the coloring I want it to have eventually (including the manipulated color). I changed the yellows and reds in the scene to be purple. I want the majority of the gif to be purple and cyan, but do not want it to be on her skin.

First add a layer mask to the adjustments that are creating the color you want to remove. I used several layers to create the purple coloring, so I grouped them together and added the layer mask to the group instead of having to do them individually. In this case, I erased anywhere the purple was on her skin.

She is walking away in this scene, so this layer mask alone is not enough. This is where keyframes come in.

In the timeline window, scroll to the layer that your layer mask is on (or in my case, group). On the far left side, each of the layers should have an arrow which toggles a drop down menu. Click it and it will list options for Opacity, Layer Mask Position, and Layer Mask Enable. Make sure the current time indicator (small blue arrow and red vertical line in the timeline window) is positioned at 00:00:00 and then select the clock icon next to Layer Mask Position. It should place a small yellow diamond at the same place as the indicator. Each successive move of the mask will place a grey diamond at the timestamp that you move it.

CMD+click on the layer mask in the Layers window so that the area of the mask becomes outlined with a dotted line in the main workspace. Click the chain icon next to the layer mask in the Layers window to unlock the mask's movement.

The next steps are the most tedious. You have to manually move the layer mask every few frames to a new position that follows the movement of the gif. I usually zoom the timeline in so that each second is broken into six sections and pick a new layer mask position at approximately each section. If there is more rapid movement in the gif, you may have to pick new positions at more frequent intervals and vice versa.

After the initial layer mask is set at the 00:00:00 point in the timeline, select the next interval that you want the layer mask to move to. Do this by moving the time indicator to your chosen point. Now with the move tool, click within the layer mask and drag it to where it needs to be to keep coverage on your desired area. The longer/more frames in the gif, the more keyframe points you will have to select. This gif was about 2.5 seconds long and I used 14 different points.

These are just a few of the keyframes I made on this gif. You can see here that the original area that I erased in the layer mask doesn't quite cover all of her skin throughout the movement. I just erase a bit more until I'm satisfied with the coverage.

Once you have mapped all the points out, deselect the mask area and click the blank space where the chain icon was to make it reappear and return the mask to a locked position.

Scrub through the gif to make sure that the mask covers everything you want and also that the keyframes make it move smoothly. Shorter intervals and minor position changes between keyframes usually keeps choppiness (this normally presents as the mask noticeably jumping to a new position) to a minimum. You should not be able to notice the mask's movement except in the way it removes color from specific areas as intended.

Export and save the gif as normal.

This is my finished result:

#userfanni #omgari #usersunny #userbells #userkraina #tuserabbie #tusergabriela #useroli #userangelic #supervalcsi #userphe #keyframes #*tutorial #tagging a couple of you who have been like ‘how tf did you make this’ on sets that i used this technique hope you dont mind #idk how coherently this reads or if it even explains it well enough but feel free to ask for clarification #there are also other keyframe tutorials on here that are written much better so check those out too if mine doesnt make sense #but yeah this is how i make my vibrant gifs that have movement in them #i'm going to make a tutorial explaining the actual coloring process too eventually #might make a part two of this explaining how to use this method for more complicated movements #like when your subject moves in multiple directions or there are multiple subjects #riah.gif #riah.txt

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bonefall · 5 months

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post/734733274896809984/do-you-ever-worry-your-own-writing-might-come-off that makes sense. i was asking because i'm afraid of accidentally writing misogyny myself and i kind of admire what you do

Hmm... I wish I had better advice to give you on this front, but honestly, the only thing I can tell you is to consider the perspective of your female characters.

Women are people. They have thoughts and feelings of their own, so like... just let them have their own arcs. A lot of the worst misogyny in WC comes from the way that the writers just don't care about their girls (or, in the case of tall shadow, actually get undermined and forced to rewrite entire chapters), so they're not curious about their lives, or WHY they feel the way they do or what they want, or any direction for their character arcs.

Turtle Tail as an example. She'll often just end up feeling whatever Gray Wing's plot demands. She's gotta leave when Storm dumps him to make him feel lonely. She shows up again to love him in the next book. Lets her best friend Bumble get dragged back to Tom the Wifebeater, but is sad enough about her death to be "unreasonably angry" with Clear Sky, and then calms down and accept Gray Wing is right all along.

And then she dies, so he can have his very own fridge wife.

In this way, Turtle Tail's just being used to tell Gray Wing's story. They're not interested in why she would turn on Bumble, or god forbid any lingering negative feelings for how she didn't help her, or even resentment towards Clear Sky for killing her or Gray Wing for jumping to his defense. She isn't really going through her own character arc.

She does have personality traits of her own, don't misunderstand my criticism, but as a character she revolves around Gray Wing.

So, zoom out every now and then, and just ask yourself; "Whose story is being told by what I wrote? Do my female characters have goals, wants, and agency, or are they just supporting men? How do their choices impact the narrative?"

But that's already kinda assuming that you already have characters like Turtle Tail who DO have personalities and potential of their own. Here's some super simple and practical advice that helped me;

Tally the genders in your cast. How many are boys, how many are girls, how many are others?

And take stock of how many of those characters are just in the supporting cast, and compare that to the amount you have in the main cast.

If you have a significant imbalance, ESPECIALLY in the main cast, fire the Woman Beam.

It's a really simple trick to just write a male character, and then change its gender while keeping it the same. I promise women are really not fundamentally different from men lmao. You can consider how your in-universe gender roles affect them later, if you'd like, but when you're just starting to wean yourself off a "boy bias" this trick works like a charm.

Also you're not allowed to change the body type of any girl you Woman Beam because I said so. PLEASE allow your girls to have muscles, or be fat, or be old, or have lots of scars. Do NOT do what a cowardly Triple A studio does, where the women all have the same cute or sexy face and curvy body while they're standing next to dwarves, robots, and a gorilla.

Or this shit,

If you do this I will GET you. If you're ever possessed by the dark urge, you will see my face appear in the clouds like Mufasa himself to guide you away from the path of evil.

Anyway, you get better at just making characters girls to begin with as time goes on and you practice it. It's really not as big of a deal as your brain might think it is.

Take a legitimate interest in female characters and try not to disproportionately hit them with parental/romance plots as opposed to the male cast, and you'll be fine. Don't think of them as "SPECIAL WOMEN CHARACTERS" just make a character and then let her be a girl, occasionally checking your tally and doing some critical thinking about their use in the story.

(Also remember I'm not a professional or anything, I'm just trying to give advice)

#I wish I had more succinct and practical advice to give you besides the woman beam trick #Honestly I just kinda feel it out because I like telling stories about girls #I made it fun for myself by clapping and cheering and whooping and hollering whenever a girl does something #because it's not fun to write like a monk in a monastery #With the spectre of Brother Smockbimble looming over your shoulder telling you to Write Perfectly Every Time #Characters aren't real people. You can just fix it if you happen to fuck up or do better next time with what you learned.#Making mistakes is just part of acquiring skill #and writing is an art just like painting or drawing.#So don't make a fun OC project into homework! You should be enjoying making your own art! Express yourself!#Please understand that when I'm ripping into the series I'm being so harsh because it's bestselling corporate media #Read by HUNDREDS of thousands of kids worldwide #Raking in millions of dollars a year. Written by a TEAM of professionals.#So I have higher expectations of it than of a fandom rando on the internet. Or even a self-published author who's just One Guy.#Hence why I'm infinitely more charitable to Ratha than I am to Battle Cats #bones gives advice

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prettycoolducks · 3 months

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just finished playing portal revolution. I like evil science lady and her rabid vacuum cleaner

#my art #portal revolution #very well put together portal mod #puts in on the shelf with stories mel of good portal mods i have played that connect gaps in the story or add to it in some way #i think i shall put this in the portal tag as well. apologies if it does not belong there #portal #portal 2 #this mod was well written and well voice acted. only thing i didnt like so much was the ending. them being sent to the moon was funnny tho #i mean the after credits scene made me feel better but at first i was just like. huh? so they just all die in the end?#it was a bit fast paced like riiiight at the end. the very very end #also while im talking ive noticed a lot of portal mods struggle with 'boss fights' and making them puzzles but still fast paced.#which is fair because its hard to make fast paced puzzles while still being challenging while still being easy etc etc #the puzzles in the last chamber were a bit confusing to figure out at first and i got stuck a lot #which led me to just standing there trying to figure out where to go at times which slowed down the pacing #the rest of the puzzles were great tho. maybe a bit easy but still great #also i spent like 5 hours in the game! so far! thats a good 5 hours of extra portal content! woohoo!#art of duck

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icecreamsodaaaaa · 1 year

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Thoughts on different dragons having cultures and different languages?

#augh i think they should have different language……. and like focusing on more cultral aspects #i feel like the rainwings have their own language and written language and god i hate the framing of the rainwings like AUGH no!#though in my version of wof i wouldnt make Glory convert them cause of course… i feel like she would end up joining as an important part of #the kingdom because she wants to be apart of the culture she missed out on and her discovering how much better it is than a stinky ass cave #and she feels like she belongs and damn were other dragons wrong fuck them fuck you kestrel 🖕#anyways sorry if this is semi incomprehensible its 1 in the morning but oh the thoughts…#i know this has probably been said a million times before but idk #maybe i wanted to rant about rainwings and Glory #wof #wings of fire

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layzeal · 7 months

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bitching abt the poll scroll this is SO stupid but i'm mad

ok this isnt about ship wars or whatever but these tags are making me laugh because "how could wlw fics of two originally male characters be BETTER than a CW queerbaiting sapphic couple" my guy, because those fics were actually written by lesbians

#I AM HERE TO DEFEND WLW WANGXIAN THEY ACTUALLY FREED ME FROM GIRL LIKER CATHOLIC GUILT #like regardless of how u feel about genderbends #lesbian fiction written by lesbians will always be better and hit a lot more than something written by. the CW #of COURSE i didnt vibe with mainstream wlw media before i started reading wangxian genderbent fic of all things #because those fics are being written by people who know liking girls is more than teehee what if we hold hands and braid each otehrs hair #the source material already hit hard and having fics explore how that'd happen if they'd been raised as women makes it hit even harder ik #anyways read out of your system by mimilamp and maybe you'll calm down #modao

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staryarn · 11 months

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I like how all of the project moon games are tied together by cycles of pain and suffering and learning how to end your own cycle of suffering just to get a breathe of fresh air (or at the very least, attempt to end the cycle).

In lobotomy corporation Angela is going through her loops over and over until the script progresses. She's only 'free' when she decided to start white days and dark nights and take the light for herself. (Same can be thought about the Sephirah and their meltdowns)

In library of ruina both Roland and Angela are in another cycle of suffering and hatred (though from Roland's stance its moreso a cycle of suffering and hatred towards Angela for White days and Dark nights, along with the Pianist incident.)

Eventually the cycle is broken by forgiving eachother (because Dying only perpetuates it) and freeing the books of the library .

And so far limbus has shown us the sinners each confronting their past and (more or less) deciding how to move forward with their lives.

(This is especially evident with how canto iv is worded and how Yi Sang wants to choose the road he walks rather than wandering aimlessly)

(Bonus to what I said in the tags about connecting each sinner to a Sephirah (minus dante and whichever sinner decides to backstab, making it 11 which matches tye Sephirah.

The Will to Stand up Straight (Malkuth) - (???)

The Rationality to Maintain Discretion (Yesod) - (???)

The Hope to be a Better Person (Hod) - (???) (I'd personally want to say someone like Sinclair)

The Fearlessness to keep on Living (Netzach) - (???) (Personally I connect this with Yi Sang)

The Expectation for the Meaning of Existence (Tiphereth) - (???)

The Courage to Protect (Gebura) - (???) ( I think Don Quixote would fit this one)

Those who are Faithful and Trustworthy (Chesed) - (???)

The Eye Facing the Fear; Breaking the Cycle (Binah) - (???)

The Eye Embracing the Past; Building the Future (Hokma) - ???

The Knowing I (Angela) - (???)

#someone else write this post better im sleep deprived as hell and have a headache #its not well written I just have to spit it out #as said earlier i did immediately sppt a connection between yi sang and netzach as the will to keep on living #and I feel like thats how were going to get the sinners connevted to the Sephirah . through their own goals and motivations in life #I know they siad theyre done w the librarians so this the way i think they may be referenced #idk man #theories #lobotomy corporation #library of ruina #limbus company #there arent really spoilers in this but ask me to tag it anywys #I know these are bad analysis observations i am just sleep deprived and bad at conveying my thoughts

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verdantglow · 2 months

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Fuck it, time to be loudly cringe & find my 30 weirdos.

Trafficstuck AU

Because even 12 years after starting Homestuck, I still found myself in bed one night, trying to sleep, but unable to because all I could think about was Griann <> Gudtym Wiscar.

(I’ve got so much figured out for this AU that I don’t know how to share. Please send me asks about your fave/anything you’re curious about so that I can have some direction for this lore vomit!)

#I’ve got troll names & blood colors for everyone #plus a handful of their quadrants figured out #I have so many more ideas tho that I haven’t written down yet #(I should really write this stuff down…)#I can tell you right now tho that there are A Lot of ships in this #mostly because quadrants but also because like #what not have polyamory if it’s my AU & I want to?#also lots of quadrant confusion #because feelings are complicated #(also I promise for my followers who are looking for SmallEtho or scarian)#(that there is plenty of both in this AU.)#trafficstuck #hermitstuck #(because that tag gets seen more & I might expand to all the hermits as well once I know them better!)#traffic smp #trafficblr #verdant art #also I drew these like. Over a month ago.#it was the doodle of Gudtym & Griann that actually drove me to join this fandom.#(this fandom being mcytblr)#I drew these nerds as trolls & suddenly the brain rot had claimed me lol #scarian #I supposed I should tag that just in case.#as it’s explicitly stated here.

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piecesofchess · 2 months

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Been debating redesigning Ettore this year. There are parts I love about his design, and I have yet to reveal his backstory + mask. It'll still be the same, but I'm thinking of changing him visually just a lil bit.

Kind of want to match these vibes, honestly

#this red and black bauta getup...i've saved so many pics cause it gave me huge inspiration #it was initially going to inspire a design for a new oc but #i might use it for a redesign of ettore #and i will finally draw + reveal his mask #and how he's come to work for deacon #i also wanted to do a mini project of ettore discussing the clockwork's views of the elites #i have it written out but i still kind of wanna draw it. still torn over how i wanna do it #able's design is a bit more drawing friendly although his hat bothers me but that'll be fixed with his promotion designs #i do love ettore's complicated side hanging hat thing. armada clockwork + roses??? i love him.#but i think his design is a bit too unnecessary in places and although i'd love to slap a bunch of belts on him still #i want to find a better execution #blah blah blah blah im scared of having more than 2 ocs cause i struggle doing oc work #i just never feel like i have the time

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gyroshrike · 10 months

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This is ooc because like Daryl would ever drag Connie away from a fight and not be ready to punk bitches with her

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rawliverandgoronspice · 9 months

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I can kind of see why Hyrule reads as imperialistic to you in totk, but why do they read white? Sonia is brown and rauru is a black goat. What makes the difference between them and Ganondorf so bad?

Hey, thanks for the ask!

So... I have an answer, and it's kind of in layers. So I hope it's fine if I kind of go on Journey TM where I figure out my own feelings on the topic alongside you, the person reading! It's long! Kind of meandery! Sorry!!

Also, I had written a great version of this reply to this ask that Tumblr fucking ate and I'm furious about it, so this version is slightly more annoyed as a baseline because of Tumblr and not the ask itself. But I got stubborn and decided I would rewrite the whole thing tonight. So.

Here we go.

Layer One: My Basic and Unfiltered Gut Reaction

My first, potentially unwarranted gut-level reaction would be: I kind of think it's a stretch to consider them POC-coded. Sonia gives me more tanned Ariana Grande vibes than anything else, but that's... I mean, I'm aware that there are brown people with lushious blonde hair and blue eyes out there, that race as USA-infused Internet understands it is Complicated (I'm half-brazilian, and even though I'm very very white and don't consider myself biracial but bicultural, I had people discussing my ethnicity to my face a non-zero amounts of time, including quite recently, including in my own family! so I super get that it's more complicated than what I make it out to be here). But given vibes don't count as an argument, I completely get + accept if that reading on her ethicity is therefore dismissed. She could very well be brown. Fine by me.

(so, I feel like I have to add this borderline-conspiratory reason why I'm suspicious of her skin color being considered a factor here, which can 100% be dismissed but I still want to bring it to the table: I've been to several meetings and heard about many instances where "diverse traits" are being handed over to characters with the explicit purpose of using that diversity as shields against deeper criticisms of core aspects of the storytelling instead of fixing the storytelling itself, and honestly it could very well be the case here. I really hope it's just the team thinking Sonia would be prettier with a darker skin tone, because her design is genuinely lovely and I really like it, wish she didn't die like immediately and had a character arc of her own, but. Imagine the kneeling scene with two very white ladies and everything else, etc. It might be overly paranoid of me, but I can't help but squint a little bit in this specific instance, especially since the biracial trait here is so toned-down that it's barely there and barely committed to anything. Which would also make a good argument against this suspicion too tbh! Anyway. Just wanted to bring that up so you get the whole picture of where my brain is at.)

Rauru... Okay. Here's the thing: I can't unsee The Rauru. The original one I mean (and his Skyward Sword Gaebora counterpart), aka: the White Patriarch of all times.

(this has nothing to do with anything but Link's little recoil animation here is so funny to me, like he looks so shocked and his nose is so pointy)

I do think that removing the origins of this character from his DNA for TotK is kind of overly convenient when discussing this iteration, especially when his role in this game is basically a mixture of OoT Rauru and the Unnamed King of Hyrule (and every king of Hyrule that came after). I mean, okay sure maybe the Unnamed, Unseen King of Hyrule wasn't white but... it's obviously not true, right? And while I understand this is a different iteration of that character, many characters in the series maintain their base ethnicity across different reimaginings (even Blue Pig Ganon remains a gerudo at heart post OoT, at least in the way we keep on understanding him). And beyond this, given the fact that Rauru retains this energy of a Founding Father (in the largest possible sense), I feel that, at the very least, that patriarchal energy is extremely important to his character to a core degree.

But even so, yes. Rauru is now indeed a Goat Man. Not only is he a Goat Man, but he dresses in ways that are very inspired by mesoamerican cultures; undeniably so. So that would make him at least mesoamerican-coded, right?

I mean... I guess? I guess. Sure. But. I have now to introduce the Layer 2 of my argumentation, which is that...

Layer Two: Zonai Culture is Hylian Coded

So. Pretty bold claim I know. Let me explain.

Now I certainly do not want to say that mesoamerican civilizations are not *everywhere* in the aesthetic inspiration for the zonai culture in Tears of the Kingdom; I'm sure these real life references are overflooding the moodboards, from the color palet to the symbols to the artstyle, the costumes and the buildings. It's the main way the game communicates zonai-ness to us the player. And it's great! I wish they had went even harder in that direction (I think there's even pretty dramatic differences between the zonai ruins on the surface, much more interesting imo, than what was done with the actual zonai architecture at its peak).

But now, I will ask a question that I asked myself often while playing. What is zonai culture, beyond the feathers and the indented patterns and the swirls and the dangly bits? What characterizes it? I would say that zonai civilization is primarily interested in automation, technology, mining to develop said technology, and things that float in the sky. Beyond this, and from the limited perspective the game gives us through Rauru and Mineru, we see a society ruled by a patriarch (neutral term, it is just patriarchal in nature), married to a woman who is a priestess and doesn't seem to hold an equal amount of power (she doesn't speak as much, seems content to handle the religious side of things), who values collaboration and engineering prowesses, has an army, servants, robot servants, administrates other races through, to be docile and go the game's way, collaborativeness... It's Hyrule. It's just Hyrule, except older and with a different paintjob; but at heart, the style of society upheld by Rauru is very (eerily?) similar to what we get to know in the TotK/BotW era. Actually, this version of Hyrule seems extraordinarily similar to the Hyrule we get to see in BotW pre-Calamity: replace the zonai technology with the sheikah's, and what's the difference --except that this later version of Hyrule isn't trying to pass itself off as perfect? Zelda doesn't experience any kind of culture shock. Even the language seems to be basically the same. It is Hyrule, because it is. It's the origins of the kingdom. This is the whole point of the zonais: being that familiar thing that we know and love, except more pristine and more glorious and more mysterious so we can be sad when it gets destroyed.

So is it aesthetically inspired by mesoamerican cultures? Yes. Does it evoke specific details about said culture? The way politics and religion interconnect perhaps (unless we consider Rauru coming from the gods as such, but it's nooot super specific and not really elaborated upon)? What that culture valued, or what we assume it once valued? Cultural shortcuts we tend to make with these cultures, for better or for worse? I may be extremely uncultured here, and if that's the case I apologize, but I never really saw any of the aspects highlighted as the core pillars of the zonais commonly associated with either mesoamerican ancient civilizations, or current living native decendants of these civilizations. The biggest connexion or shortcut I see is the "mysterious ancient advanced civilization", which is pretty vague and was honestly more convincing in BotW.

Then of course, it doesn't invalidate that connection. But now, as a point of comparaison, to see what happens when Zelda takes active steps in coding one of their fantasy races... Let's take a look at the gerudos, shall we?

(Urbosa appreciation break. She's just so freakin cool look at her goooo!!! okay now we can keep going.)

I have said my whole spiel about the gerudos about a bajillion times now so I will try to make it quick. My tl;dr is: gerudos were always meant to be culturally disruptive. It's their whole point in the Zelda series. I won't rehash the whole thing about the crescent moon, the orientalism etc, but I think it's important to remember that they are meant to be considered foreign in a way no other Zelda race ever is. What I mean by this is, if we return to OoT: they are the only race hostile to Hyrule enough to not only consider and carry out an invasion, but to forbid entrance to their territory if you are not one of them. They have a different (apparenly evil-looking) god and their ears are rounded when everyone else is some sort of elf, their script is different, their cultural values are different, it's a weird semi-matriarchy where the man-king's occasional patriarchy has a very different social role than the king of Hyrule even if we don't get to see all the details... Won't return on the thievery and the 90s islamophobic kick of that time period, but the gerudos were very obviously crafted to be culturally deviant to the Hylian norm; their difference so great that getting accepted by them is an actual fighting and infiltration challenge. And even though they are much friendlier in TotK/BotW, they are still, by far the most innaccessible and different race out of all the rooster of, and it's worth mentioning, fish-people, bird-people and rock-people. They are the only one with their own language, their own strict rules that oppose your freedom as a player, a series of side-quests that directly address the subject of culture clash and differences; and, even then, they still parallel the real life western fantasy about the Orient TM (even more-so in TotK I would say, which I didn't love): the locked-in harem foreign men are forbidden to enter. This core idea is so entrenched that it becomes gameplay.

When it comes to Ganondorf, the parallel remains, more present than ever: in that game he gets to embody the foreign, cruel, brutal, cunning, manipulative, uncomfortably feminine at times, envious, physically intimidating, oppressive Man of the Desert in a long tradition of Men from the Desert and the rich legacy of literature and movies that portray them. It's not new to TotK, to be very clear: but TotK did double-down on the trope at the cost of Ganondorf's specificity as a character instead of questioning the trope that birthed him the way the series had tried to do in the past (even TP wasn't that bad, doing away with a lot of the baggage altogether --for better and for worse).

So to me... saying that zonais are mesoamerican-coded, in a world where we simply do not actively interact with these cultures all that much anymore (not at all to minimize the very real oppression of their descendants and the extreme and sickening violence their ancestors were met with to be extremely clear --I'm just saying that the violence wouldn't have worldwide cultural resonance in the same way and I don't think would have much reality in Japan unless, again, I'm saying dumb things and in that case please do correct me), or the extremely mild and non-invested way Zelda handled these cultures (to me it's much more costume than coding), positively too (good!), and comparing them to the active coding of the gerudos (and especially Ganondorf) as a means to equalize them as "basically the same thing" feels... a little off to me.

But! Now we're getting to the last layer!!

(you have no idea how long I searched for this gif, I typed "Ganondorf kneeling" in the gif search, like a fool, and parsed through much, much horniness to finally find my little dude anyway layer 3!!!)

Layer Three: It Isn't What Actually Matters Now Is It (at least according to me, the person writing this post)

Honestly, I don't really care whether Rauru and Sonia are white-coded or not. They could be, they could not be, cool by me either way. I don't really care if the zonai culture is meant to stand-in for mesoamerican cultures for Real for Sure or not, and heavily doubt it was done to increase diversity (otherwise Rauru wouldn't be, like, a Goat-Man but just a brown man). I do appreciate the visual diversity of the cast of NPCs, that hylians can look like a whole number of people and it's really cool Hyrule is moving into that direction instead of being very typecast into a sort of Japanese-ish representation of western middle ages/fantasy/fairy tale thing.

But at heart, what bothers me between this whole dynamic has less to do with whom is coded as whom than the fact that this game twisted itself into knots to tell a very suspiciously clean story about its complicated world and complicated history, and I feel like it's completely fine to ask for more than the bare minimum of visual representation and question the way these characters get to interact with each other and how their real life struggles are meaningfully talked about in the worlds Nintendo spend millions crafting? Sometimes, what they do is already great! Sometimes it's half-great! Most of the time, it could be so much better --especially when some of these subjects have been talked about to death for over 25 years (sorry to beat that dead horse one more time btw)

At the end of the day, the story itself is strange for many reasons. The power dynamic between the characters is attempting to be several things at once; maybe it's not on purpose, but either way, the world TotK paints is a strange one that only holds itself together if we accept to take it at face value. Which we don't have to.

And to me, TotK felt particularly shallow in that specific department of representation due to the whole... Imperialist Vibes thing (the other ask about this is queue'd, it's coming!), which nullified a lot of these efforts for me. It's not only about who's represented, but how they are represented as well, and, very importantly, why.

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